


Will

by a_t_rain



Category: 16th & 17th Century CE RPF, 17th Century CE RPF, Elizabethan and Jacobean Theatre & Literature RPF, Shakespeare RPF
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 03:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6639418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1616.  Susanna is troubled by her father's will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will

**Author's Note:**

> You can read Shakespeare's will [here](http://www.bardweb.net/will.html).

_Consumption_ , John had said, shaking his head; and Father, not much surprised by the diagnosis, had been quick to play upon the word in a dozen different ways. To have consumption is both to _consume_ and to _be consumed_ , like a candle sinking and drowning in its own wax. Physician’s wife though she was, Susanna had not thought of this before. She was not like to forget it now.

* * *

John had said he might live for some time if he was careful, and he did so; but the decline, when it came, was swift. Mother was inclined to blame Judith, and her impulsive marriage, though of course she did not say so to Judith’s face.

“But, Judith!” said Father, between coughs. “Dost love him?”

“Of course not,” Judith had said cheerfully. “If I were of a mind to fall in love with Tom Quiney, I should have done it ten years ago when I was young and foolish. But he’s a good friend, and he was in trouble, and needed a woman to help him out of it.”

“What manner of trouble?” Mother asked.

“Never you mind,” said Judith. “‘Tis Tom’s affair, and none of yours.”

A few days after the wedding, Margaret Wheeler turned up in Stratford, heavy with child, and it became apparent what sort of trouble. Father had been furious with Judith. “That poor woman’s _trouble_ is far greater than your husband’s! _You_ might have had a thought to her, even if _he_ did not!”

“ _Why_ should I have a thought to her?” Judith demanded. “I do not know her at all, and Tom says she is a foul shrew, and swears she has been with many more men than him!”

“The more you ought to give her your charity,” said Father wearily, “because you do _not_ know her at all.”

“That is _so like him_ ,” Judith had fumed, once she was alone with Susanna. “He thinks more of this stranger than he does of his own family. I verily believe he has more sympathy for Jews and Moors and – and _calibans_ , if his plays are anything to judge by.”

In a month Margaret Wheeler was dead, and her child with her. A month after that, when the woods around Stratford were bright with the daffodils and primroses he had loved, Father died. Judith had been with him at the last; he had not breath enough to speak nor strength to write, but his hand had tightened on hers, and when she knelt beside his bed it had rested on her hair in a last blessing.

If he had been able to speak, Susanna thought, he might have left a different last will from the one she and John were bringing to probate. If Judith had been disappointed, she had not said anything. It was not _like_ Judith not to say anything, and this was part of what troubled Susanna.

Mother had also said nothing, and had seemed unsurprised by any of the will’s provisions except the bequest of the second-best bed in addition to the usual widow’s portion. This had made her lips quirk unexpectedly; it must have been some private jest between them.

John had also shown no particular sign of surprise, and then Susanna began to wonder whether it had always been intended that she should inherit nearly all, and whether she had been the only one who had _not_ known. Perhaps it had been part of her marriage settlement. She thought about the possibility that Father had _bought_ John for her, and found – to her discomfort – that it did not seem entirely improbable.

She asked her sister, afterward, whether there was aught that she could do for her. Judith went uncharacteristically vague, and said only that she thought she was going to have a baby, and that she hoped Susanna and John would stand as godparents.

* * *

Susanna and John traveled to London two months later, when the will came to probate. They left Elizabeth, now a pretty child of eight, in the care of her grandmother; Susanna kissed her and bade her be a good girl, and pondered the improbable sequence of seven imaginary sons that the will had posited for her. It seemed unlikely that any sons would ever materialize. There had been no miscarriages, no stillbirths; after Elizabeth’s birth she had simply never conceived again. John had said that this happened to some women, for causes the physicians could not explain, and asked whether she wanted him to examine her and see whether he could do aught for her. She had declined. It was no sin, surely, to enjoy a trim figure and good health, and to take the pleasures of the marriage-bed without perpetually thinking of the possible costs, if God so willed it? John had seemed more relieved than disappointed by her answer. He could not miss the sons he had never had, Susanna supposed, as other men missed the ones they had lost.

She wondered now if she owed it to Father to try; but it was clear from the terms of the will that a son of Judith’s would be almost as good, from Father’s point of view, and might in time make up to Judith what Susanna had unwittingly taken from her.

* * *

It was the first time Susanna had ever traveled to London without Judith, who had said she felt too unwell to travel. She found that she missed her sister’s quick tongue and bold ways; she even missed her new brother-in-law, who was quick with a jest, whatever his faults might be. She wondered what she should do if Judith, too, should die in childbed.

Almost as soon as they alighted from their coach, they were accosted by a beggar; a worn-out whore, Susanna judged. Judith would have given the woman her whole purse – for Judith was prone to impulsive sympathies herself, and cared little to investigate whether beggars were worthy or unworthy of her charity. Susanna wondered if, perhaps, her hasty wedding to Tom had been one of those generous impulses. After all, a jilted woman like Margaret Wheeler could expect to receive charity as well as scorn from the world; but only Judith was likely to take up the part of Margaret’s seducer.

She gave the woman a coin for Judith’s sake, and thought that she must make sure that Judith always had money enough to bestow some of it foolishly, yet not enough to bankrupt herself and her child.

* * *

After the will had been proved, Susanna and John spent most of the following forenoon inspecting their new property in London; then they dined at their inn, debating whether the Gate House ought to be sold or whether they should hire an agent to manage it, and how a suitable agent might be chosen. It occurred to Susanna, in the course of their conversation, that she knew as much of her father’s business affairs as any son might be expected to know, rather more than her husband, who was busy with his own profession; and that this was no accident, for Father had always ensured that she did know. He must have planned this for years, then. Well, Mother was sixty, and could not be expected to be a very energetic manager of property; and Judith and Tom would no doubt spend it all into the ground if left to shift for themselves. Susanna began to understand.

In the afternoon they walked to the theater, intending to stay only long enough to disburse the money for mourning rings to Master Heminges and Master Condell and Master Burbage; but the actors invited them to remain and see the afternoon’s play, gratis. They had been performing a different play of Father’s nearly every day, Sundays and holy-days excepted, since the news reached London.

“How can you remember so many parts?” Susanna asked, astonished. Master Burbage, she supposed, might have a great many plays by heart after five-and-twenty years, but what of the boy actors?

“Will made it easy,” said Condell. “He was one of us, do not you forget, and he shaped his lines to be remembered, and to flow one from the next as easy as breath.”

 _Breath is not always so easy_ , thought Susanna, remembering her father’s last days, and when she met John’s eyes she knew he was thinking the same. But it was a comfort to know he still breathed in this world, in a way.

“This one is the last,” Master Condell added. “He put it aside, and never finished it, for he said he had not the will. We gave his foul papers to Master Middleton, and he has mended it for us. It is a strange play; I do not fully understand it. But it is the last first time, and we would be honored if you would stay for it.”

* * *

 _It is no wonder Master Condell does not understand the play; he never knew our grandfather_. Indeed, Susanna’s grandmother and Uncle Gil had always insisted that _Susanna_ had never known her grandfather, though she had been fully eighteen when he died, and it was only in John Shakespeare’s manner with his grandchildren that one could catch glimpses of the generous, trusting man they said he had once been. The bitterness she remembered vividly, and the way he had hidden himself away – not in a wilderness, to be sure, but behind his household walls. It was no wonder, either, that Father had never finished the play; Timon’s rage at mankind felt too near, too raw. It was almost too close to a portrait from life to be believed, Susanna thought, though that sounded like a paradox. There was not enough poetry to mediate it. Nevertheless, Master Burbage made you believe in Timon. Susanna wondered what it would be like to be Master Burbage, breaking in all the ways a man could break, day after day, year after year, and then rising again to take his bow. She would have to ask him about it at supper.

Most of the other characters seemed little more than line drawings in charcoal – color and shading and dimension to be filled in hereafter, by a painter who had never returned to the work. Master Middleton had done little to breathe more life into them. Perhaps his talents lay elsewhere, or perhaps he had thought it wrong to supply more breath than their first maker had been able to spare for them.

Flavius the faithful steward, however, was made of other stuff. Susanna recognized him as _real_ , as someone not unlike herself; a man wrestling with a great wrong, and trying to do right.

_Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart._

She caught her breath, feeling, abruptly, as if Father were speaking to her from the grave, and telling her his will for her.

_... Strange unusual blood_  
_When man’s worst sin is he does too much good!_  
_Who then dares to be half so kind again?_

Unusual blood, indeed. Judith had inherited it from Grandfather, and even Father had a little of it, as Susanna had not. She had been charged, instead, with a duty; not, perhaps, to be very kind or very daring herself, but to preserve kindness and daring in a world that was all too ready to take advantage of them.

_I'll ever serve his mind with my best will;_  
_Whilst I have gold, I’ll be thy steward still._

She thought she could manage _steward_ ; it seemed easier and more befitting than _heiress_. She took John’s hand, and accepted what had come to them with her best will.


End file.
